The Practice of Medicine: Public Welfare

Abstract

This Chapter Elaborates on How the Pre-Colonial ‘scientistic notion of medicine, divorced from Persianate civility, and the native doctor as public servant set the ground for the early British idea of public health. It shows how these early health oncerns were not entirely modelled on borrowed Western models of civil society. Rather, they encapsulated ideas of public welfare and social well being that operated as domains fiercely contested by local patrons and the Company. Indigenous medical patrons—notables, rajas, and elites—and the knowledge base of hakims and other medical communities—played a critical role in the public welfare concerns of the British in nineteenth-century India.